On the Anti-Conceptual Education System in America

I've been trying to put a label on exactly what I believed to be the primary factor in the decline of America's education system for quite a while, and it was only tonight that the lightbulb turned on. I suppose I ought to pose an example first and give readers an opportunity to analyze it's implications.

This is a paraphrased excerpt from an essay prompt I saw being assigned to underclassmen today:

"...boys are falling behind women in math and college graduation rates. Should government funds be given to schools to help their boys improve?"

Students are given all sorts of scientific facts, such as statistics about boys and girls, how government aid in the past "helped" women gained an edge, etc.

I feel I'm misrepresenting that question slightly, but I think my point can still be made. Students are asked to take an isolated, out of context idea and accept it as a concrete. The issue of government handouts is not being related to any larger issue, such as the nature of government and its proper function. How can the essay prompt be answered intelligently if it's not taken in the wider context of the proper function of government? This is brainwashing in its most evil form. It gives students a group of random facts and statistics, and confines them to those numbers for their argument, ignoring, in my opinion, purposefully, essential questions, such as whether or not government should even be involved in education at all.

Students are not asked to think in concepts or principles, but in isolated events that are completely cut off from the whole. This goes against our very nature though, as humans are conceptual beings; our survival depends on it. A proper education is one that doesn't defy our nature, and seeks to teach students to think in terms of wider concepts.

Examples

The American Revolution - at it's core, it's an issue of individual rights, but we are rarely taught this in school. Instead we're given isolated facts such as taxes, property control, quartering, trade restrictions, etc, and asked to make sense out of the mess.

Essay prompt on government aid to boys - it's essentially one of the role of government, but the question removes the students ability to think in those terms by limiting them to concrete bound statistics.

I don't have more time to write tonight but I hope I made my point.

What Bothers Me?

I was just overcome with annoyance while listening to the song "Hands Held High," by Linkin Park. It made me think of the Liberals who didn't support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, who now praise Obama for taking out Bin Laden. Oh...contradiction.

Common Good?

I was recently asked about the common good in regard to morality. Here's the brief response I wrote. It's unfinished.

I used to be a utilitarian; I was the guy who, when asked the question about who you would save on the train tracks, the one guy or the group of people, I chose the group. Then I became interested in history. I read about people such as Hitler and Stalin, and I realized that this whole idea of “the common good” has been the justification for nearly every mass murder in history. I realized that when morals are subverted to whatever “society,” if such an entity can exist, deems to be the common good, then morality becomes subjective. What was good one day can be bad the next. Since society is simply a collection of individuals, the common good can only truly be defined by an individual, such as Hitler and Stalin. Anything they deem to be moral is moral. Who can question that? Who would dare question the common good? I now look at morality on a rational, individual basis. When confronting the question about who to save, I ask the question, “of value to whom?” Who is the man on the track? Who are the people in the group? I recognize now that value and morality doesn’t exist at the collective level, but the individual, and my moral decisions are now based on this principle of individuality.